Escaping the Mythology that Plagues Software Technology

Abstract

A recent article in Scientific American [Gibbs94] observed that the software crisis is still with us (assuming that a state of crisis can persist for roughly three decades). It also observed that a state of grace known as Software Engineering would resolve the crisis if software technologists could ever manage to achieve it. Needless to say, the piece also noted that they are nowhere close. What was most distressing about the article, though, was not the still endemic problems of software production, but the widespread acceptance of fundamentally flawed conceptions of the actualities of historical and contemporary engineering and manufacturing practice. Software technologists remain captured by distorted notions of the nature of technological practice which will almost certainly lead to disappointment and frustration rather than the promised land.